Viewpoint: Fearing Obama, is it delusion or obsession?

President Obama's first year in office has not been an easy one and his successes have been few. It probably hasn't helped that the political rhetoric in this country has dipped to an all-time low. I'm not suggesting that it's wrong to criticize a president; that's our right. But what has mystified me for almost a year now is that the lunatic fringe has gotten so much play that patently ridiculous ideas are now repeated as fact.

The liberal wing of the Democratic Party, of which I proudly claim membership, has been disappointed in the President at almost every turn. You name it – health care reform that neither reforms health care or reduces its cost, his reliance on status-quo economic advisers, his continued faith in a military solution to the political/cultural problems in the Middle East, or his reluctance to give more than verbal support to the civil rights of the gay community.

“Change we can believe in” has turned out to be an empty promise, in our opinion, as he has moved ever steadily toward the political center.

Yet President Obama continues to be castigated by his ever-boisterous critics as a dangerous, ultra left-wing fanatic out to destroy America. Most of the “fear of Obama” messages are so divorced from reality that trying to refute them is like trying to argue with someone who believes that extraterrestrials are invading the bodies of earthlings.

A recent letter-writer to the Kalamazoo Gazette demonstrated just how illogical these criticisms and fears have become. As a rule of thumb, any letter that either begins with “wake up America” or ends with “our freedom depends on it” is unlikely to contain thoughtful discourse. This writer, however, took that extra step into ideological blathering by further stating that “we are very fast becoming a SOCIALIST country and possibly a FACIST country” [capitalization is mine].

How does one respond to such ignorance? Well, let’s start by remembering that socialism and fascism are considered to be on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum (socialism on the left and fascism on the right -- for those who weren’t paying attention in their history, political science, or economics classes). Like our confused letter writer, others have compared President Obama to such opposites as Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin. I believe the President would prefer FDR, but I know a few people who would consider that comparison almost as odious.

It would be convenient to place the blame for this sad state of affairs solely on the media as, in my lifetime, I’ve watched much of the media mutate from presenting mainly facts, with some opinion, to presenting mainly opinion, with some facts.

The print media has been the least likely to follow this disturbing path, but they’re almost all facing financial difficulties as they lose readers and advertisers to the Internet. The Gazette at least correctly placed the above-mentioned letter on the opinion page where it belongs. TV and radio have been largely reduced to presenting news as entertainment, and on the Internet, reputable news venues are lost among the clutter of websites where anyone with a keyboard can mouth off without regard to facts.

The blame is perhaps better placed on those of us who don’t take the time to discern the difference between fact and opinion or between reality and fantasy. Like self-professed ministers who have never studied theology, the political pundits and nut-jobs-with-websites should be ignored as much as is humanly possible.

President Obama is not the Antichrist and he’s not a Muslim. He isn’t an alien (either kind) and he’s not part of a liberal conspiracy to bring about a one-world government. Let’s put “know-nothingism” back in the fringe closet where it belongs and all take a deep breath. Our freedom may not depend on it, but our sense of perspective surely does.